Guild Wars 2

aside from being OK whilst leveling and exploring? I’ve tried a few different minion builds and when it comes to dungeons, PvP and WvW i always end up going back to my powerwell build, simply because i feel useless with minions. I attempted the AR dungeon with minions once, it was awful, i had to respec on the last boss.

I’m nowhere near being a necro expert but from what I’ve gathered in anything other than a 1v1 it’s generally better to not have a full utility bar of minions. It also seems minions are better for the utility they bring rather than their raw damage. They are also potential sacks of life force so you should be ecstatic when they die. As far as dungeons go I have no idea.

…..

Remember I’m no necro expert don’t quote me on this

I can give you a home-bunk good 1v1 build. Unfortunately despite my pleading and extended input on the matter, ANet sets me aside. Feel free to take part http://tinyurl.com/n3bjnr6 here (My MM thread), as I’m trying my best to bring attention to bring them into viability. It’s a wonderfully fun build/playstyle, it just needs work on the side of the developers…

On some dungeons, you could go a setup that is based on secondary/npc control over the enemy, (2 necros, ranger, mesmer and guardian or ele), worked pretty well on release in CM explo and SE.

Well minions will never be viable in WvW. Nothing beats large radius aoe spam. It wouldn’t take much to make them viable in Spvp though.

Minions are okay right now. Any time you are in PvP with over 5 people in the fight, they start hitting issues and you are going to probably prefer other builds. In small-scale WvW they work very nicely, because they bring the ability to handle NPCs for you, have a lot of control/survivability built in (Rigor Mortis is really strong). In PvE they work until you get to bosses, and then you have to be smarter about using them (and also realize that many boss fights have little to do with your utilities and more about playing the mechanic).

PvP, where people tend to put the most focus on them, depends. 1v1 home bunker builds they work great; you should be able to hold that point all game unless they devote a number of resources to it, and Flesh Wurm can allow you to push objectives instead of being limited to sitting there like most non-Mesmer back points are. For team fights you need to consider what they have:
Blood Fiend – lots of passive healing, and a decent heal on a short CD, some ranged damage/attacks (for on-hit effects)
Bone Minions – mini bursts of 4k+, plus perma poison and high weakness with death nova, plus 16-20s 2x blast finisher
Bone Fiend – 2x projectile finisher, some ranged DPS, and strong control (cripples and a long immobilize) and LF
Shadow Fiend – DPS, and highest non-elite attack speed for on-hit effects, plus a spammable blind (with dagger 4, you are annoying) and LF
Flesh Wurm – 1x projectile finisher, stun break, decent DPS (high per-hit damage but slow attack speed), and LF
Flesh Golem – DPS, near perma cripple, Charge is hilarious for both damage and control

Also, remember that they get AoE buffs. If you have a spirit ranger, venom share thief, aura share ele, any kind of support guardian/ele, basically any support build that has AoE buffing will turn your minions from annoyances to huge threats (and while they die over time to AoE, they actually have higher base-eHP than most players, they just won’t avoid damage).

So really, it depends on your team. If your team needs what minions bring, or has the right comp to buff your minions, an MM can put out really high CC and damage, while being very survivable. On the other hand if you can’t manage the minions you’ll find yourself as useful as an untraited Necro with all your utilities on CD.

@Bhwab: Please stop claiming Minions are ok, they totally lack design and if you give this kind of feedback, then Anet won’t never fix them as they should be.

Bunker builds working great? What about the advantage of Flesh Wurm?
You’re saying some correct things and exagerating others in a wrong manner.

@CrossFire: Consider this. The MM isn’t indipendent, has a lot of flaws, in both Pvp and Pve. It is bad designed, what you see is the result of a randomic experiment from Anet with placeholder skills and traits.

Some players having fun in playing them (some to show their skill, some for dedication) will say that you can do marvelous things with Minions, but that’s not pretty correct.
Organizing with your team to make a Minion Mancer viable means wasting a lot of time and having competent team-mates (and however the result is not reliable * ). That’s not a thing that every Necromancer who wants to run Minions can do. That’s not how Minion Master should work.

The only thing that makes the Minion Mancer resilient is the fact that you are forced in bringing 20-30 points in Death (200/300 more toughness + related gear).

I’d suggest you 1 thing. Dont play minion builds in Pve, don’t waste moneys and time building a Minion Mancer equipment, as at the moment it’s not competitive.
(I made the mistake long time ago and had to remake another equipment for conditionmancer, thus wasting a lot of time and effort)

* In most games and mechanics, adapting a whole team to a particular design option (Minion Master in this situation) works ONLY if that option is a win-card. A pity MM isn’t that card. That’s why in Pvp compositions matter the most the classes which have a better balance and that occasionally are indipendent.

Luke.4562:

@Bhwab: Please stop claiming Minions are ok, they totally lack design and if you give this kind of feedback, then Anet won’t never fix them as they should be.

Bunker builds working great? What about the advantage of Flesh Wurm?
You’re saying some correct things and exagerating others in a wrong manner.

They are okay. I’m using that to say they aren’t bad, you can use them, but they aren’t ideal. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think a single minion (or many traits relating to them) are perfectly balanced yet, they have a bit of tweaking to do, and they need to resolve certain problems. But saying they are terrible and complaining in every minion thread that they need full reworking isn’t helping at all.

Also, something that I thought about recently. The ability for minions to take off conditions seems very weirdly done. If you are using minions as disposable utilities, they aren’t really alive enough for you to notice the effect. If they are there to survive, then often they are a major source of damage, and you have traited for them to live; so why load them up with conditions that will kill them and lower DPS? The only time I’d really want to run this seems to be if I have survivable minions, yet don’t care if they live, and don’t rely on them for damage, or I have some way to keep them cleared of their conditions and alive through them (such as Putrid Mark + regen/healing). Not that it is a bad trait in some situations, but I always find myself vastly preferring to just use the tons of available cleanses instead of using 10 trait points and losing out on something like Death Nova.

Offering and explaining the reality with the words of a disillusioned player isn’t “Complaining in every minion thread”.

Diffusing misinformation and hiding Anet error’s isn’t a correct thing to do.
Time is precious.

Well… I dominate in sPvP with minions so…

In WvW they get creamed like they are nothing cuz of massive AoE and PvE? From my experience they are just fine. In dungeons it can be tricky cuz people tend to do their little “tricks” and skip certain parts…. and minions have a mind of their own so…

Agree with Bhawb, not sure what minion builds people run that they feel is so weak.

Climbed to 300 rating with the MM build I ran, overall best 1 v 1 build for necro before patch. Its been a little outclasses after the patch, but its still a strong build for how kitten easy it is to play.

I’ve been running minion master in tPVP for awhile, and they are alright. The biggest advantage of minions is that their autonomy makes it so when the necromancer is being controlled or disabled (which is often), their minions are still maintaining their offense. This lets you build a tanky necromancer that uses minions as a primary form of offense while making yourself nigh indestructible. The minion master build also has plenty of decent control abilities, which lets you lock down your opponents while dealing plenty of damage to them.

Outside of minion masters, I’ve found many minions to be effective at one point or another.

Flesh Golem: He’s an all around good guy. he has fairly high melee damage, and also his charge can stun a group of enemies, blowing through defiant like it was nothing. I like to use him to initiate a fight sometimes, sucking up aggro and stunning enemies while the rest of my group lays down AoEs.

Bone Minion: These guys are pretty awesome. Putrid explosion is a pretty hard hitting AoE + blast finisher that you get to use twice. While on a 20 second recharge (16 with the traits), you can fire them off frequently, providing a nice burst damage for necros. They act as miniature guided missiles: Just point them at an enemy, then fire. They can also make for a nice AoE burst when you get ambushed by something, since they’ll hang around you and work as a point blank AoE attack.

Flesh Wurm: This can be used cleverly as a transportation skill, but it is also good against champions and bosses in general. It has far range, so you can put the wurm down and he’ll do extra damage at a distance to whatever you are fighting, including the dragon champions. Then, when things get dicey, you stun break and port right out of there.

Bone Fiend: this is similar to the flesh wurm in that it is low maintenance and can be used to fight champions. it is dissimilar in that it can immobilize. But the most creative use of the bone fined is to combine it with Spectral Wall to cause confusion with his special attack. Now that spectral wall has changed, this probably isn’t an effective tactic anymore.

Shadow Fiend: Although he has the highest damage next to the flesh golem, ultimately his melee nature gets him killed. Outside of MM builds he is the least useful minion, since all he does is an occasional blind.

Blood Fiend: I’ve never really used this one myself.

You can find necromancers occasionally running around with a minion or two while not having an MM build. Personally I have a hard time taking bone minion off my bar, because the damage + blast finishers on such a short recharge is hard to replace.

It’s not needed all that intelligence to understand the whole specialization hasn’t even a concept, the fact you’re saying it’s strong is a distortion of yours, by the moment it’s not competitive at all.

Aggravating with a thread like this? Feeling bad for Anet? Anet should feel bad after releasing an incomplete game without even working about concepts and making all specialization avialable. Yeah “L2p”, all that solves around this phrase. I’d say L2 spend your time with something that has more quality than this.

I can’t realize how such people don’t understand the point and defend themself blindly after the “L2P” and claiming skill… Bah.

As a necro who’s still leveling, I have found the Flesh Golem to be very useful. Not only does he draw aggro and keep my foes in one place so I can AoE them easier, but the cripple and the knockdown are great for keeping enemies off me since I build fairly glassy. The after-battle regeneration is just icing on the cake.

Outside of the Flesh Golem though, I’ve found the rest of the minions to be generally ineffective. Some of them are disposable but have underwhelming effects upon being sacrificed, while others are meant to be sustainable but don’t last long enough to contribute much to the fight. Anet needs to make up their mind as to which direction minions should go, because the traits dealing with minions go both ways and they are often anti-synergistic.

Minions do not dodge. Use them in situations where they do not have to. Open world PvE is good for minions as is holding a point or line to some extent. Some dungeons work better with minions than others. If you are looking for the one build that does everything really well, Necromancer is probably not where you will find it.

Plan your build around what you intend to do ahead of time and caugh out the silver when you want to do something else is my advice. I do wish Arenanet would allow builds to be saved as favorites along with equipment, though.

Not in PvE. In SPvP? Solo queue. In WvW? Not really, unless you want to solo a skill point, or just roam around by yourself… so .. basically NO.

People say the ranger pets are worthless in PvE, but I have not found that to be the case, since you can select ranged pets and control their behavior.

They need to at least let necros control their pets…. so they could at least use a bone/blood fiend for PvE.

I would love to use bloodfiend in WvW, but the stupid thing is a liability, like all the other minions. Taking them over anything else is giving up a good utility slot for a potentially good minion. If the opponent numbers get too large, the minions are largely useless. Their skills, even though they have fixed their activation time, still have slow cast times on the minion side, making them feel clunky.

If I ask for Immobilize, I need immobilize VERY fast, not whenever the minion decides to cast it. They can be out or range, attacking the wrong thing, etc etc.

The only saving grace might be the massive poison fields they can create, but we already have good access to poison, so why bother? Some minion siphon SPVP solo builds work okay in lower level play, but that is about it.

I will say, if the bone minion would suicide bomb like a mesmer clone, instead of just blowing up by my side, I would use that utility. But since I cannot depend on them to be in range when I need them to, it isn’t worth it.

I agree completely about Blood Fiend, Rennoko, but am not as negative about minions in general. The two things to remember about them is they need to be traited to work halfway decently and they are the Necromancer’s closest build to an Easy Button. Just set them out and know most of them will work for you most of the time while providing a distracion you can use for damage avoidance.

A recent argument made me compare Consume Conditions, again, to Blood Fiend so I ran around farming mat’s in Cursed Shore. The minion lost that argument, again. It needs to remove conditions or heal a lot more before it has even a chance. ConCon heals more with conditions and its CD is somewhat guaranteed where Blood Fiend can get one-shotted by the same AoE that just burned down my own health so it is not ther when I need it. That gives me an idea to post in the suggestion area, though.

Minion builds should not be highest level play viable, nothing that lets you win with AI should be. MM is solid easy to play its in a good spot when the minions actually attack.

You don’t build a game, especially an MMO with levels of viability on purpose. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard in regards to design for a game… Minions are really no different than glorified dots that can be killed and kited. Its not that kitten OP in any manner. Its not like Necromancers have the mobility to use minions as a hit and run.

In GW1 Minion builds had one of the highest skill caps in the game, realistically only reachable by AI heroes. While they are very easy to start off on, if you are only using minions to auto attack then you are no different than a well build that starts every fight by dropping all his wells and hoping for the best.

minions are nice meatwall in spvp

flesh golem is nice interrupt in any place.

in wvw zerg minions don’t work.

in pve many instances have so much aoe that minions just die really really fast.

I wish the MM from GW was back. Instead of minions with abilities, numbers would be awesome.

Death Nova with ever spawning minions from the dead would make things SO MUCH fun.

Also good support :P.

Anchoku.8142:

Minions do not dodge. Use them in situations where they do not have to. (…) I do wish Arenanet would allow builds to be saved as favorites along with equipment, though.

The main problem with the minions is their lack of fear for their security. They don’t dodge, so any attack catch them at full power. And a boss AoE just wipe them. So don’t use them in a AoE boss fight! (the Worm is an exception!). Besides, having all your skills used on minions is a shame.

For all other cases, Minions are ok. Not great, but they got their job done: they give you extra toughness, they damage your foe (some times!), they lich life for you, and take agro and attacks. They work fine in PvE, and I had used them in WvW without problems.

I tried a Conditionmancer to try to change my build, and mobs I killed before without looking at them, now kicked my kitten , so I got back to minions. I have to try the Powermancer yet.

So… use them wisely, at moments they would be useful, and change them when they wouldn’t.